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I love that you snuck in a reference to Tennis Ronan.

the hierophant

my piece from the raven arcana zine digital copies available for a limited time here

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I think it was Gansey.

so…who was the third sleeper? 

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Love this. Noah held on long enough to be a hero, and then he moved on. It was the ending I needed for him.

On Noah Czerny

So, I just finished The Raven King last night, and so am still processing…just…the everything of it (the “quiddity”, one might say…). But, as I do, I realized I wanted to say something about Noah.

I suppose because I’ve been seeing comments (or, hints of comments, and hints of hints of deeper-running feelings) expressing dissatisfaction over his story arc. And, it just rather surprised me, because I didn’t feel that way at all.

I was most certainly, certainly sad over his final scenes - but, I have been sad for him since the moment I knew (or even suspected) he was a ghost (and knew, at the same time, that I loved his character). Because as soon as that became clear, it seemed to me that, even within the rules of magic set down in the world of the story, there could be no “becoming more” for Noah - at least, not in the sense of regaining life. Which left, at least in my mind, either decay or a stagnant existence, where he would remain always as his same 17-year old ghost self while the others all grew up and onward around him. Which, to me, didn’t seem like a great thing for any of them (I don’t doubt that they would have tried to remain linked, but the living would have grown and changed in ways that Noah couldn’t). So, Noah’s arc fit with the line/loop/slinky of the story.

And, actually, I was fiercely happy, at least for a moment, about what his story meant - both for him and for the others. Noah could be the most fearful of them, but in certain moments he could also be the most courageous - including clinging to his decaying soul, risking possession and fragmentation and the loss of his friendships to hang on just long enough to save them all, or to bring them all to a place where they could all save themselves. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that, given that I expected Noah to just be just gone, with no agency to the going, or else possessed more firmly as he decayed, and Gansey to be sleeping somewhere on the ley line beyond the reach of the others to wake, I felt more…I don’t know, fulfilled?…by Noah’s arc/loop/time slinky than I had feared I would be. Actually, I think I really loved the way he tied them all together, and just that he’d been able to find these friendships that he didn’t have in life after life at all.

But, that is just my feeling.

Wow - this was longer than I thought…

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I’m still noodling on this myself, and I think I need to re-read the book before I come up with a good answer, but this is what I’m thinking initially: 

On the ley line/in Cabeswater/when you’re dead like Noah and Gansey, all times are the same time. All the moments exist simultaneously. So Cabeswater sacrificing itself brought Gansey back to life in both timelines - both in the past with the hornets (when Noah whispered the bit about Glendower and set Gansey off on the quest that would lead him to his friends) and in the present with Blue’s kiss (where Blue, Ronan, and Adam work together with Cabeswater to wake him - he was the sleeper from BLLB they needed to wake, never Glendower). And once that happens and the timelines resolve, the “cycle” is completed, Noah’s work is done and he can be at peace/at rest/whatever, and Gansey can be alive and go on road trips with his friends. 

(This made sense in my head but writing it out sounds ridiculous.) 

Someone explain to me WHO BROUGHT GANSEY BACK THE FIRST TIME HE DIED IF IT WASNT GLENDOWER????

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Some people have a softness that draws water from the earth. Call it dream. Call it flight. The opening & closing of your eyelids, like sparrow wings beckoning the trees. The music of your bones, startling spring from the earth, the dazzle of your smile squeezing honey from the bees. You are kinder than the cruelest thing that’s ever been done to you. You are so good, bad people are ready to break every cruel word over their knee. You are so good, lazy people line up to be the coffee-mug at your mouth.  The religious talk about the second coming & you talk your shadow into starlight. If you asked the clouds for shade the sky would split itself like apple. If you asked me to cut out my heart I would do it with my own knife.

“That Kind of Good”, Natalie Wee  (for Caitlyn Siehl)  (via wondersmithinc)

completely lovely.

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Ahhhhhhhh.

Finished TRK today. I have lots of swirling thoughts, and need to let it settle and then re-read. But this I know for sure:

I love that all the loose ends aren’t perfectly tied in a tidy bow. I love that the ending has the authentic, messy, not-quite-perfect feeling of real life. 

I love that it’s not really an ending. They still live in a world of infinite possibilities. Look at all the potential it holds.

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On Ronan and Whitman...

Immediately, the Mitsubishi was nearly a length ahead. On either side of the street, the streetlights flickered and flared, measuring out life in epileptic bursts of light:

flash

cracked asphalt

flash

Aglionby sticker on the dashboard

flash

Noah’s widened eyes

They were bodies electric.

The Dream Thieves, chapter 34

I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

...

The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place, He too is all qualities, he is action and power, The flush of the known universe is in him, Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well, The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well...

“I Sing the Body Electric,” Walt Whitman

“Bodies electric” is an allusion that isn’t trying to be sneaky. It’s in the first line of one of Whitman’s most well-known poems, which celebrates the physical body - what it can do, what it can create - and establishes the body and soul as connected, not separate. That second part of the quote is very Ronan-esque, no?

And perhaps he’s also a little bit of this, from “Song of the Open Road”:

I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.

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Still re-reading TDT and marveling at it.

Declan said nothing. The Gray Man gave him some time to consider his reply. Head wounds tended to make thoughts slower.

[Maura] didn’t immediately answer, and [the Gray Man] didn’t press her. Heart wounds, he knew, made one think more slowly.

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A happy resolution: indie bookstore in the neighborhood doesn’t have a copy of TRK in stock, but can place an expedited order and have it for me tomorrow. Amazon order: CANCELLED.

Hope you’re able to land a copy too, @perpetuallyreading!

Pre-ordered The Raven King MONTHS ago, and now Amazon is telling me it’s out of stock. WTF AMAZON. What’s the point of pre-ordering if it’s going to be “out of stock” on release day?

Anyone else having this problem? To say I’m disappointed is a MASSIVE understatement. 

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The exact same email was waiting in my inbox this morning. I am crushed. About to call every bookstore within 20 miles of me to see if anyone has it in stock or can order it for me. I don’t want to reward Amazon’s bad behavior!

Pre-ordered The Raven King MONTHS ago, and now Amazon is telling me it’s out of stock. WTF AMAZON. What’s the point of pre-ordering if it’s going to be “out of stock” on release day?

Anyone else having this problem? To say I’m disappointed is a MASSIVE understatement. 

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I had a lot of fun - thanks so much for kicking it off!

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who participated in the trk countdown. I hope you had fun. 

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TRK Countdown #15: Predictions Day

HENRY CHENG. Who is he and what does he want?!?!?! I am dying to know and so excited to find out.

The boys exchanged a comradely handshake over the table. They had some things in common: Before quitting last spring, Gansey had once been the captain of the crew team, and Henry had once signed up for the crew team at breakfast before scratching out his name by dinnertime. Gansey had been to Ecuador; Henry had once done a modeling photo shoot with a racehorse named Ecuador in Love. Gansey had once been killed by hornets; Henry’s family business was on the cutting edge of designing robotic drone bees.

The two boys were friendly, but not friends. Henry ran with the Vancouver crowd, and Gansey ran with dead Welsh kings.

Those are Chekhov’s robotic drone bees and they must be deployed in TRK.

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That moment when you feel known, by someone you’ve never met.

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Piggybacking on my last post, this delightful allusion immediately followed:

Like Monmouth Manufacturing, the Barns was transformed utterly by the changing light.

- Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

…He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn,   Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born….

- W.B. Yeats, Easter, 1916

Thank you, @maggie-stiefvater, for writing a (YA? perhaps) series that utterly rewards the sensibilities of adult English majors who took “Irish Poetry and Prose” in college. 

“…We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead;   And what if excess of love   Bewildered them till they died?…”

I want to write a thousand meta-posts about allusions in TRC - and if my copy of TRK doesn’t arrive soon, I am totally going to.

Never mind that the phrase “no country for old men” is also from Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium.” Stop it, Stiefvater - now you’re just showing off.

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I love this. @cherryandsisters, you just get it.

I love this scene sO MUCH

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I KNOW RIGHT?!

TRC and Saints

While we’re getting meta, let’s talk about:

St. Mark’s Eve - when, according to TRC, the spirits of the nearly dead make themselves known to those who have the second sight and hold a vigil in the proper place.

St. Agnes Church - That’s the Catholic church Ronan attends, and where Adam lives above the office. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is also a John Keats poem. But what happens on the eve of St. Agnes, you may ask? Oh, I’m so glad you did. If a young woman performed the proper rights, she would see a vision of her future husband - her true love? - that night.

“Coincidence,” Gansey said, because it wasn’t, and because it had to be said.

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TRC and Saints

While we’re getting meta, let’s talk about:

St. Mark’s Eve - when, according to TRC, the spirits of the nearly dead make themselves known to those who have the second sight and hold a vigil in the proper place.

St. Agnes Church - That’s the Catholic church Ronan attends, and where Adam lives above the office. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is also a John Keats poem. But what happens on the eve of St. Agnes, you may ask? Oh, I’m so glad you did. If a young woman performed the proper rights, she would see a vision of her future husband - her true love? - that night.

“Coincidence,” Gansey said, because it wasn’t, and because it had to be said.

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Piggybacking on my last post, this delightful allusion immediately followed:

Like Monmouth Manufacturing, the Barns was transformed utterly by the changing light.

- Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

...He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn,   Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born....

- W.B. Yeats, Easter, 1916

Thank you, @maggie-stiefvater, for writing a (YA? perhaps) series that utterly rewards the sensibilities of adult English majors who took “Irish Poetry and Prose” in college. 

“...We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead;   And what if excess of love   Bewildered them till they died?...”

I want to write a thousand meta-posts about allusions in TRC - and if my copy of TRK doesn’t arrive soon, I am totally going to.

Never mind that the phrase “no country for old men” is also from Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium.” Stop it, Stiefvater - now you’re just showing off.